February 5, 2009

If I don't see your photograph or hear some description that stops me, I picture the men looking like Cary Grant and the women looking like... No, not Myrna Loy!

Myrna Loy today would look frumpy. That hairstyle! I picture the women looking more like Jennifer Connelly.

What's wrong with me?! I like to think I'm an optimist. But it's a problem when I try to step out of this life of the mind — oh, come on, humor me, blogging is the life of the mind — and interact with real people. I believe I'm swanning around at a posh cocktail party in a 1930s Hollywood movie, and it's quite a shock to see that things don't look like that at all.

This is a topic upgraded from my Twitter feed, where I've also been talking about my other cognitive quirk: I visualize things outside of my immediate physical sphere as much smaller than they are. For example, I "small-visualize" government, industry, geography, historical time, and outer space. My theory is that this is a natural consequence of evolution: We're hard-wired to understand a world that has the scope it had when we lived in a small, walkable place, when the things we knew about had a human scale.

You are obviously thinking about me and wanting to meet me and waiting with baited breath.

I know, it always happens to me.

For example, my 19 year old that I am doing on the DL was frantically texting me because he had to have the hog tonight. I am going out to dindin and then I told him he can come over for the hog. He said could I come meet your friends and I was like no. Wait by the phone and I will call you when I am ready to be received...and services. This is strictly get in the door and into the bed and spread the legs. Last time we didn't even make it to the door. Hogs were already out in the elevator=isn't that romantic? I am totally serious too. And he's hot. 6"5, Brazillan, works as a mechanic in Queens-perfect...and he has been arrested for pot in the car-all qualities that pull on my hog strings.

When I travel, I am always surprised that things aren't actually bigger and more grand than they really are. This comes from growing up in West Virginia where, because of our inferiority complex, we imagine that everything is bigger and better someplace else.

Back in the early '90s we used to go to bars and play what we called "The Celebrity Game." One person picks a stranger in the bar, the the others have to name a celebrity who looks like the come up with a celebrity who the stranger.

Althouse should run a game in which she picks out a commenter, and everyone else has to name a celebrity who we imagine the commenter looks like.

In real life, does a man ever do that attaching his profile to the side of the woman's face thing?

I do. Isn't it the adult version of sucking face? And I disagree with HB. By feigning distraction, the woman allows the man to display his sole attention to her affections, reaffirming her desirability and perpetuating his pursuit of her. I also became quite enamored with cheek-to-cheek-to-cheek... touching after I was captivated watching a young Indian couple on a bus do it while conversing. The Karma Sutra notwithstanding, these Indians seemed to know what they were doing.

Me? Tom Hanks, perhaps, without make-up and when he doesn't have his weight especially under control.

I always picture radio announcers and disk jockeys as being mid 30's and handsome blond or dark haired men. I was really shocked when, as a teen, I met a rather popular radio personality and he looked like an aged balding Don Knotts. Really ruined the listening experience from then on.

I'll take Myrna Loy over Jennifer Connelly any day. One's a woman and the other's a twerp - and an uninteresting looking one at that. Look at the photos you linked to: what's really there? I don't know about you, Ann, but Connelly looks to me like a mirror-adoring kid, and also someone into astrology, "saving the planet," etc., I.E. someone I couldn't be bothered with.

From a mental point of view, I visualize people on the content and context of their written word. Since I have Synethstesia so I see things much differently. I see geometry, colors, words, ideas, equations, and all kinds of combinations that intermingle and blur. Not just mentally in my minds eye, but also in reality. Although, while you may see people as beautiful, I don't have that luxury because of the way my brain works.

@Crack I think Lou Rawls is adorable, and I apologize -- and was going to apologize in the post but it was too meandering -- for having a mental image that had everyone white. I'd like to say that if I have the additional piece of information that the person is black, I picture a gorgeous black person.

I always thought Myrna Loy was something special. She and Maureen O' Hara were "differently beautiful" and their intelligence was a big part of their beauty. I don't think Loy looks dowdy at all in that picture.

Connelly is beautiful, for that matter so is Catherine Zeta Jones but Moy, O'Hara, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, they were beautiful with brains.

I think the old movie stars personify an approach to life more than a look. When I'm trying to be honest and sincere, I channel Jimmy Stewart; urbane and witty calls for Cary Grant; manly and determined is John Wayne; brave and ultra cool is Steve McQueen. And Humphrey Bogart has a special place: battered and worn down by his knowledge of all the shabby secrets and betrayals but still willing to pass along the letters of transit. It's not who you look like. It's who you want to look like that defines you.....Myrna Loy would be a good choice for the movie version of your biography. She doesn't like you but she leaves the same aftertaste. She was witty and respectable and sexy enough for all procreative purposes. And, more importantly, all those qualities were present in the right proportions to make her a fine companion for the adventure. Rosalind Russell was too brittle; Norma Shearer too respectable; and Hedy Lamarr way too sexy to have any kind of balanced life with. Myrna Loy was just right. I think you channel Myrna Loy.

It's like the Althouse fat thing. Women are taught to hate curly hair as much as they're taught to hate fat (or even "fat", as in "not extremely slender"). Curly hair is frumpy, bad hair, uncontrollable, ugly, lower-class hair. Hair should be straight and shiny.

It is allowable to put a faint wave back into the ends with curlers once the hair has been straightened, but actual curls (such as Myrna's) are a no-no.

It's one of those weird things that tends to confuse men. It came as a revelation to me in my 20s that a lot of men actually prefer curly hair, as long as it's healthy and not dry and frizzy. All my life I'd thought everyone considered it ugly.

Oh, good points, jaed. I hated my curly hair, too. But now I love it.And you're right, as long as it's healthy looking, curly hair is very attractive. And most women with curly hair can blow dry it straight and have a great look that way, too...a lot of body and volume that many women pay to get.

That said, I can't really tell if Loy's hair is naturally curly. It's a pretty popular style for that era. Could just be a bad perm there.

Theo: Thanks for your kind comment. The correction you made was what I wanted to say. Thanks for posting the clip about Myrna Loy which was the occasion of my comparison.....Of all the male movie stars who wormed their way into my identity only Jimmy Stewart was who he claimed to be on screen. The others were, to varying degrees, skilled impersonators of who they wanted to be. They weren't phonies. They were true artists whose greatest creation was their persona....Myrna Loy was apparently who her audience thought she was. But that's irrelevant. On screen, she was a nice lady who made civilized life look like fun. I certainly hope that Althouse does not become implicated in the Michael Vicks dogfighting scandals. But whatever the sublimity or squalor of her personal life, her blog is a civilized pleasure and there is something of Myrna Loy's playfulness in her writings.